If encryption is allowed, then there can no longer be any restrictions on the use of ham bands - you won't be able to tell the difference between someone calling for help or doing disaster relief and a pizza place using ham radios for dispatch.

But to answer your question "who cares?", hams care, and I'd be surprised if people sending encrypted transmissions are not soon discovered - and if you knowingly violate the regulations, you run the risk of losing your ham license. If you're not licensed, (or even if you are for egregious or repeat violators), there are various enforcement actions the FCC can take including significant fines, equipment confiscation, and other criminal penalties.

>Someone has to discover whats happening and actually care that a rule is being violated. There really are not many hams that have the skill to figure out what is happening when they hear this on their precious 70cm band and THEN realize encryption is happening on top of the network layer. Sure, they exist, but they are also generally busy doing real things that matter rather than volunteering for the Amateur Auxiliary.

In my experience, there absolutely are plenty of hams out there who will triangulate you and report you for violations. You'd probably get away with a warning at first, to be fair, but many hams (at least around these parts) are old retired dudes with nothing better to do.

You're not wrong, but you are also lumping "old hams" into the same category as "hams that use computers". While the old dudes can certainly fox-hunt like no bodies business, they are the same dudes that get irate at the idea of hooking a perfectly good ham radio up to a computer, so that rules them out for figuring out something like ssl is being used ;-P.

If you think I'm wrong, just walk around any ham fest and ask for help setting up your Winlink node ;-).

In contrast, if you look at the astonishing upsurge in the FT8 activity, it can't be just new kids.

I mean, the FCC does not really have a track record of enforcing violations. You could probably do whatever you want, until some hams fox hunt you and tell Uncle Sugar you are breaking the rules. Even then, the FCC is likely to only give you a warning rather than a punishment.

That being said these bands are out there for the public to use, the government has set aside a pretty decent portion of the available usable frequencies for use of the public. In my opinion is just in poor taste to not follow the rules here.

In these days when you can get a Baofeng HT for $25, there are already all sorts of unlicensed people stomping all over others just to be jerks.

I listen to folks DXing on CB across the continental US all the time. Not long ago I heard someone in Puerto Rico make a contact in Canada. On a band supposedly limited to 4 Watts. The FCC doesn't care unless there's a complaint, and even then there's definitely a dollar amount attached to an enforcement action. They don't roll huff-duff wagons on a whim. Everyone should watch THX1138.

Hams willfully ignore everything 11 meter